518 Bryan Vannet Project general Lee

We are converting this 1968 Charger into a 69 General Lee for Bryan Vannet who is stationed in Afghanistan in the military. We are honored to be involved in this project.

This project was brought to us at HRF by Domingo and Keith who were in the military with Bryan and all have been fans of the General Lee their whole lives. Bryan is still in the military and I guess once you trust your friends with your life its easy to trust them with your money. We at HRF also grew up on the General Lee and can appreciate what Bryan wants to do with this car. We will start by dismantling the car blast the body and schedule it for metal work this way we have a clean rust free car to build off of. Bryan is very fortunate to have such a clean car to work with. It will of course need quarters and some trunk work but what Charger doesn't.

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The trunk area has some tar over what is probably going to be rust holes of some kind the blaster will remove the tar to reveal the extent of the damage.

Other side of the trunk same tar hiding rust

The floors are very clean just minor surface rust I am sure there will be some pin holes in the floor pans to patch

these car are notorious for rusting in the floors. This car is very solid

Here you can see how clean this car is these chargers are almost always rotten in this area

driverside cowl panel nice and clean very rare

This fender has had some damage on the backbone of the fender it will need some work but is rust free

The other fender very clean as well.

Frame rails are very clean in this car

Here you can see that the Kframe is bent as well. We will have to replace it either with a tubular one or find a nice original one

A few rust holes here nothing major

Here you can see the rear shock crossmember with some of the worst welds we have seen yet this will need to be replaced

Wheelhouses and rear of the rockers are also bad these items will be removed and replaced with new ones

Here is some more handy patch work these welds are not stock they were done then covered with bondo to hide the poor repair job luckily we were replacing the tailpan anyways.

This is the other side of the tailpan another low quality repair.

The other rocker this one was filled with newspaper then mudded over it is amazing what some guys will do to hide rust and make a buck.

Here you can see a few spots we have already repaired where there was small rust holes and pressure bulges. Notice how nice the wleds are and all ground smooth as they should be.

This is a shot of the transmission tunnel. They must not have invented cut off wheels back then just a chisel and a hammer will due...

Some of the pin holes in the floor pan. The frame rails are really nice in this car that is hard to find these days usually we have to replace them to.

here you can see the trunk floor i new this would be rusty since it had about 10 gallons of tar poured in the trunk. This item is being made new full and complete makes installing much faster

This is the outer trunk floor notice how clean the frame rails are.

Here you can see the rust holes in the trunk area and the modified crossmember. We will install a new trunk floor it will be the the one piece kind.

Another shot of the rust holes in the rocker there was paper shoved in the rust holes then they were bonded over to hide the damage...

Holes in the wheel wells like this are very common on these cars this is no surprise they all have it.

This shows the rust hole in the driverside inner fender this item is also available repro so it saves a lot of time and money.

This one is pretty wild rust holes in the roof skin that is something we don't see very often. However it was a vinyl top car and as those old tops rot they let moister in underneath...

This is the worst repair I have ever found the welds are unbelievable. Whoever did this should not own a welder. The new quarters will take care of most of this the rest we will make

some inside shots of the trunk

the rear window also has a few previous repairs we will have to make a few items in this area.

the other side more of the same.

The new roof skin will fix these rust holes.

In this picture you can see the sealed car everything we are keeping is sealed in black

This shows the firewall. sealed the sealer helps keep the bare metal from rusting while we are working on the car before body work

more sealer pics

This shows the door jamb pillar after we made some small repairs in a previous picture there were rust bulges in the jamb area. Notice our repairs are ground smooth and are virtually undetectable.

Rich WaitFebruary 24, 2016

518 Bryan Vannet Project general Lee

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